15 Hours w/ Street Fighter IV

I finally got some time after class last night to get over to Gamestop to get my reserved copy of Street Fighter IV "COLLECTORS EDITION." I was very excited as anyone would imagine, this being the first Street Fighter since Street Fighter II that has gotten any attention for actually being a good game. Not only that, but most video game publications have been giving it very high scores (we're talking like 9.5/10 and higher), and many of those calling it the game of the month. So, I get the big box it comes in (because the game also comes with the animé film Street Fighter IV: The Ties that Bind on BD--DVD for Xbox 360 owners--which also has a CD soundtrack from the game in the case, and it also comes packed with a Ryu figurine--or Crimson Viper, who is a cunt, for 360 owners-). The Collector's Edition also comes with a redemption code to be used to download, for free, the Brawler Pack, which includes alternate costumes for Zangief, E. Honda, Rufus, El Fuerte, and Abel.

I get home with my new game, and I pop the BD into the PS3, figuring I could take a shit in the time it would take for my PS3 to install the game. To my surprise, the game required no install. I was floored--you see, this is the first time I've ever played a PS3 game that didn't require the install. I figured they were all like that. Well, after going through the ten seconds of waiting for my fights to load, I decided to go ahead and install the game anyway. It turns out to have been a good choice, because now I only have to wait five seconds for the fights to load. Very nice.


The Review

This game has, as most reviews have already stated, almost no issues with gameplay, story, etc. I have, however, found two glaring problems with the game that will, if anything, require a quick depressing of the mute button of your remote to solve. The first problem, is the opening theme song. I don't know if it's *NSYNC performing the song or what, but it's fucking gay, and it makes my ears bleed. The second problem, the announcer from Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and other CAPCOM fighting games, I'm sure, is back, and I've never been more suicidal hearing his voice. That's really all I can say for the bad right now.

The intro with gay music:


This would have been much better:


Everything else in the game appears to have been done very well, though, I would have preferred the arcade mode worked more like it did in Street Fighter II. IT isn't really a problem, though, because there are many more characters in this rendition than there were in that one, so it would definitely (and by definitely, I mean probably) make the game far too long to enjoy. The online modes are very responsive and quick to load. There is even an option where you can play through arcade mode and allow people to challenge you online while you're playing, and the game will just pull you out of your offline fight to compete in the online one. This doesn't work too well due to the fact that one can never finish a fight without having someone challenge him or her online. A way to make this work would have been to make the offline game remained paused while you play your online match and pick up where you left off, but that's not what happens. What happens instead, is the offline match you were halfway through has to start over completely, so someone can never progress in the game due to the constant stopping and restarting. Now, I'm hoping (and I'm sure this will happen) that once the game has been out for awhile, people will not be challenging others so much, and this option will serve its purpose well; because it really is an interesting concept, and I would like to use it if it only weren't so goddamn annoying.
I've played the game little more that two hours at this point, so I might put more review material out for new experiences, but I probably won't.